URA-xLaw, developed by a student team from the HCM City University of Technology, won first prize at the ATTACKER 2025 Fintech competition. — Photo Courtesy of HCMUT

HCM CITY — URA-xLaw, an artificial intelligence-based legal Q&A platform for the State Bank of Vietnam, has won first prize at ATTACKER 2025 Fintech competition, beating 250 projects from more than 2,000 candidates nationwide.

URA-xLaw, developed by a student team from the HCM City University of Technology (HCMUT) under Việt Nam National University-HCM City, is designed to help banks and financial institutions navigate Việt Nam’s sprawling and constantly updated legal framework.

The platform uses AI to process regulatory documents swiftly and transparently, providing compliance officers with precise answers backed by citations, effective dates, and contextual explanations.

The team includes five members - Nguyễn Song Thiên Long, Võ Thị Như Quỳnh, Phan Quốc Khoa, Lê Ngọc Hùng Dũng, and Lê Thanh Duy - from HCMUT’s Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering.

Team leader Nguyễn Song Thiên Long said that inside Vietnamese banks, ‘please check the law’ is a deceptively hard request.

“We chose to attack that bottleneck head-on.”

With URA-xLaw, users can ask a natural-language question and instantly see grounded answers with full traceability. When the law changes, the guidance changes automatically, he said.

The prototype incorporates a specialised retrieval-augmented generation model, a legal knowledge graph mapping amendments and cross-references, and a set of AI agents that monitor document validity and ensure quality.

It also features comparison tools that highlight changes between versions of regulations, helping institutions respond quickly to shifts in policy.

The project was guided by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Quản Thành Thơ, dean of HCMUT’s Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering; and Nguyễn Ngọc Thái, deputy director of Technology and Head of Solution Consulting Department at Viettel Solutions.

Thơ praised the team’s achievement but stressed the importance of further development.

“URA-xLaw has made a very impressive start with a complete prototype, but several aspects need to be improved for real-world deployment,” he said.

User experience must be made more intuitive, data coverage should expand beyond banking regulations, and operational costs must be optimised.

“Still, the project demonstrates a solid technical foundation and has the potential to become a pioneering RegTech platform in Việt Nam.”

Looking ahead, the team plans to refine the product based on jury feedback, publish their findings in a scientific paper, and compete in the upcoming SIHUB innovation startup contest.

The competition, co-organised by the University of Economics and Law, International Data Group (IDG), and the HCM City Institute for Development Studies, is part of the annual HCM City Fintech Road.

With the theme “Are you an innovator? We’re your investors,” it encouraged students nationwide to present creative digital finance solutions with practical impact.

Assoc. Prof. Hoàng Công Gia Khánh, rector of the University of Economics and Law, underlined the broader goal of this year’s competition.

“Winning or losing is not the final destination. What matters most is the journey ahead. Every student who joined the competition deserves to be called a winner.”

The second prize went to Team NFT from the University of Economics and Law under Việt Nam National University-HCM City for HYHAN, a fintech platform connecting students with scholarships, loans, jobs, and training opportunities.

The third prize was awarded to Team Pentagram from the University of Economics under University of Đà Nẵng for PentaGold, a digital asset ecosystem based on tokenized gold that allows users to save, invest, lend, and pay with transparency and flexibility.

Two consolation prizes went to teams from RMIT Vietnam and the University of Economics HCM City. — VNS